Henderson, McMillan, Millar, Brand, and....

[Uilleam 5,933]

Wilson

An interview from today's Times of London with the great man

(a pity about the author, but hold your nose and read):-

 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/we-lost-in-bratislava-but-later-we-crushed-spain-6-2-8ljpb2df5

 

 

We lost in Bratislava — but later we crushed Spain 6-2

Davie Wilson played in a powerful Scotland team but, he tells Graham Spiers, they lost in Czechoslovakia

 

Graham Spiers

October 11 2016, 12:01am,

The Times

 

Wilson resisted the riches of clubs south of the border to stay at Rangers, where he scored 157 goals

 

It is 55 years ago now since Davie Wilson travelled to Bratislava with Scotland to face Czechoslovakia in a World Cup qualifier. This most prized Rangers left winger was 24 years old, earning £45 a week at Ibrox, and savouring every day of his life in football.

 

“These were special times — and what a Scotland team we had back then,” Wilson enthuses to me over a cup of tea in Glasgow. “Sometimes you felt nobody could touch us. You’re talking guys like Denis Law, Jimmy Baxter, players of that ilk. Don’t forget I played in a Scotland team that trounced Spain 6-2 in Madrid in 1963.”

 

The mystery only deepens. A check of the record books shows that, on that trip to Bratislava in 1961, Scotland were beaten 4-0 by the Czechs and Slovaks. One month earlier they had gone down 9-3 at Wembley. Yet a year later Scotland would beat England at Hampden, and go back to Wembley and win 2-1. To say nothing of that slaughter of Spain in the Bernabéu.

 

The best goal I ever scored in my life, funnily enough, was during that Scotland 9-3 disaster at Wembley

Wilson is keen to point out how many fine margins there were in football back then. “We finished the 1962 World Cup qualifying campaign level on points with the Czechs, and it went to a play-off, which they won 4-2, but only after our goalie, Eddie Connachan, had made a mistake,” he said. “Well, the Czechs went on to the World Cup final in ’62 where they lost 3-1 to Brazil. So as a team, we weren’t so far behind them. Look what we did to Spain.”

 

Scotland defeating Spain 6-2 away was, and remains, an astonishing result. Yet the players in dark blue back then — Wilson, Ian St John, a young Willie Henderson, an emerging Billy McNeill, a brilliant Eric Caldow, never mind Baxter — were among the finest in Britain. They were days when Wilson himself felt the very essence of happiness.

 

“I was a Rangers player, and a Scotland player, and I used to come out to the front door to give my father his match tickets — this would be either for games at Ibrox or at Hampden. He would stand there and his eyes would be laughing. His whole face would be saying, ‘that’s my boy’.

 

“The best goal I ever scored in my life, funnily enough, was during that Scotland 9-3 disaster at Wembley. England had gone 3-0 up but my goal brought it back to 3-2.

 

“I scored 157 goals for Rangers and quite a pile, too, for Dundee United, but that goal at Wembley was my best. I thought, ‘right, 3-2, here we go’. But, my god, our goalkeeper Frank Haffey … what a stinker. I was a better goalie than him.”

 

In the early 1960s quite a few Scottish players, among them Baxter and Pat Crerand, chose to take the riches of English club football. But Wilson says he had no desire to give up playing in front of vast crowds at Ibrox, nor to leave the institution that was Rangers.

 

“In 1961 Everton came to see me on the quiet — at my pigeon loft, in fact — with a view to signing me. They didn’t want anyone to know about it.

 

“Everton said to me, ‘we’re going to put a bid in of £100,000 for you — you’ll be the first £100,000 player in British football.’ But I said to them, ‘I’m sorry, I cannae come’. For one thing, I was very happy at Rangers. But also, it would have been impossible for my father to travel from Glasgow to Liverpool for games, and he came to all my matches.

 

“I would have gone on more money down there — about £100 a week. But I never wanted to leave the Rangers. And that was the end of it.”

 

During this time Wilson claimed 22 Scotland caps —he would triple that today — and saw first hand the genius that prevailed in the Scottish game.

 

“The best coaches I ever worked under would be Jock Stein and Eddie Turnbull. Whenever I was around Turnbull [as a youth player] I just wanted to hear what he had to say about football. He was a coach with tremendous ideas.

 

“At Ibrox my manager was Scot Symon: he never left his office. I doubt he ever once saw us train. But he knew he had a great team. It was our trainer, Davie Kinnear, who got us fit. Mr Symon just picked the team — a 4-3-3 — and out we went.

 

“This was the Rangers of Ian McMillan, Baxter, Henderson, Bobby Shearer, Caldow, Ralphie Brand and Jimmy Millar. In Baxter and McMillan we had two great passers of the ball. McMillan was a winger’s dream — he just took out the defenders every time with his passes.”

 

Wilson used to go “jivin’” at the Barrowlands dancehall in Glasgow but his football remained sweet and pure. On March 17, 1962, he scored six for Rangers — a record that still stands — in a 7-1 win at Falkirk. But the end would come at Ibrox.

 

After 11 trophy-laden years with Rangers, Wilson was suddenly dumped by the club, when Symon decided to swap him for Dundee United’s dribbling Swede, Orjan Persson. “I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life,” Wilson claims Symon said to him on the phone a week later, with the former replying, “well, it’s too late now”.

 

At 29, he went on to enjoy four good seasons at Tannadice, where a young Walter Smith was his kit boy and gofer.

 

“I had great times at United,” he says. “But then Jim McLean, who was actually younger than me, came over the road from Dundee to be the Dundee United manager. I knew Jim wouldn’t take to me. I said to Walter, ‘lad, go and get my boots, cos I’ll be off … this manager won’t fancy me.’

 

“Jim came in and said to me, ‘I’m going to let you go’. It was nothing to do with skill, but the fact I was older than him. I thought, I’m going to have my say here. So I said, ‘you know what Jim … you couldn’t play in the games that I’ve played in … you couldn’t have played in the Bernabeu or in European finals.’

 

“We had our wee tiff. But when Jim won the title with Dundee United in 1983 I phoned him and said, ‘well done, you’re a very good manager, and I hope we can forget our fall-out’. He said, ‘aye, okay, let’s leave it at that’.”

 

At Ibrox my manager was Scot Symon: he never left his office. I doubt he ever once saw us train

Today Wilson is a contented man in Glasgow, soon to be 80 years old, and with an unusual side to his life.

 

“I’m a spiritualist,” he says. “I go to a spiritualist church. I’m a medium. It’s just something that’s in you that has to be brought out.

 

“I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life — we weren’t all Jimmy Baxters. I never fancied the taste of it. My father didn’t drink and nor did my mother.

 

“Whenever we won anything at Rangers, and they poured champagne into the cup, I put it up to my lips as if I was drinking it, but I never did. These were great, great days.”

[chilledbear 16]

A wee tear in the eye, cheers mate.

[MacK1950 2,376]

A great player I have fond memories of him and a game at Cathkin where the crowd overspilled onto the pitch where I watched the game from and was delighted when Davy scored and his momentum carried him into us and he had a slight collision with me.

A humble person and years later when he was selling insurance door to door I had the pleasure of serving him a cup of tea and a blether.Unfortunately for him I did not purchase from him as his company could not match my works policy,glad to hear of his fond memories in his later years.

[Scott7 6,004]

Davie Wilson - heart of a lion.

 

Note his comment on Ian McMillan. He wasn't powerful. He wasn't fast over a distance but his rifled passes inside the fullback made a winger's job easy. Plenty of speed in the brain and the feet.

[boabie 230]

I don't know how I could find out, but I'm almost certain the game against Czechoslovakia was on tv during daylight hours. I was a wee boy and recall asking my dad why the crowd were all whistling.

As for Davie himself - I met him a few times and always found him to be a total gentleman. He was one of my favourite players during that era.

[Scott7 6,004]

It was indeed, Boabie.

 

Both Alec Scott and Davie were out injured as was the 'keeper, Bill Brown.

[pete 2,499]

I don't know how I could find out, but I'm almost certain the game against Czechoslovakia was on tv during daylight hours. I was a wee boy and recall asking my dad why the crowd were all whistling.

As for Davie himself - I met him a few times and always found him to be a total gentleman. He was one of my favourite players during that era.

 

That is too early for me to have been at school I think, but I remember our school all watching a qualifying game against Czechoslovakia in school hours so you are probably right that they played during the day. Did we meet the Czechs a few years later again?

[boabie 230]

That is too early for me to have been at school I think, but I remember our school all watching a qualifying game against Czechoslovakia in school hours so you are probably right that they played during the day. Did we meet the Czechs a few years later again?

 

Looking at my age and where I lived at the time I think I'm on about a game played in 1960.

[pete 2,499]

Looking at my age and where I lived at the time I think I'm on about a game played in 1960.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_national_football_team_1960%E2%80%9379_results

 

Looking at this list it must have been the 4-2 game in Brussels I saw as it is the only game that could fit in with my time warp.

[boabie 230]

My dad used to go on and on about the abandoned match against Austria. I'd love to have seen that one.